Oct. 16: Ferreria/Pithan, Jeng

This week's articles were all about the usability of digital libraries. They look at things like effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, learnability, and error recovery. These are all important characteristics for designers of digital libraries to keep in mind. Ferreira and Pithan's study looked at the issue from a human-computer-interaction (HCI) and information science (IS) point of view, and integrated that with Carol Kuhlthau's and Jakob Nielsen's work on information seeking and usability. I think this study is a good place to start for digital library designers, as it encompasses many different ideas that, when considered together, allow for a great deal of information gathering on how users perceive the usability of digital libraries. Since the explosion of digital information in the 1990s, it seems that not much work has been done in this area and that users have had to somehow figure out how to use digital libraries for themselves. Studies have been conducted in the area of IS, I assume, since its inception, so it makes sense (a tribute to Dervin there!) to study the newest method of information retrieval in the context of usability. Keeping the human being in mind is of vital importance, since there is always a person on one end of a search for information... I remember reading Kuhlthau's article and noticing myself going through the six phases (uncertainty, optimism, confusion/doubt, confidence/clarity, sense of direction, and satisfaction/disapointment) when searching for articles in certain databases (which shall remain nameless). The study also looked at Nielsen's five variables of usability (learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction) in the context of human-digital library interaction. Much research remains to be done so that digital libraries can be pleasant, efficient, and satisfying resources for information seekers to use.

Jeng's article looks more at measuring usability. She states, "Indeed, digital library development involves interplay between people, organization, and technology. The usability issues should look at the system as a whole" (48). Here, she hit the nail on the head for me. The same theme uncovered itself to me as in Ferreira and Pithan's study - consider the human aspect. Jeng looked at the definition and dimensions of usability, how other studies have evaluated it, and proposes a model for assessing the usability of academic digital libraries using ISO 9241-11, which defines usability as "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use" (50). This same definition was used for the HCI portion of Ferreira and Pithan's study. Jeng concludes that "there is a need of usability testing benchmarks for comparison" (52). I couldn't agree more. It would be nice, at least in an academic digital library context, to have some sort of standard to which the information search and retrieval process could adhere. That way, a user would more likely know a "good" digital library from a "bad" one.

OK, here is where I insert my related experience/reading/whatever. I admit, I am a myspace junkie. I really like the social aspect of it all. In fact, I was recently (yesterday) reunited with my first and second cousins, who now live in Florida! I remember when all my second cousins were born but, sadly, they moved away in the 90s and we kind of lost touch. It was surprising and wonderful for them to find me on myspace. I also have friends in California, New York, Georgia, Washington, and even overseas, with whom I can easily keep in touch via myspace. Plus, it's just fun to act dumb and keep up one's site, at least I think so. What I want to discuss, though, is the fact that myspace needs to employ a librarian to catalog and classify its music section to make it more efficient, effective, and satisfying to use. In a word, the need to look into usability. It's fun to think of a song you might want to hear and look up the band, lo and behold, there it is! Someone out there has taken the time to create a page for a band and make their song(s) available for download and/or posting on one's page. The problem is, however, that anyone can create a music page. Well, that's not really the problem. The problem is in the cataloging. Users can name their band anything they want. For example, try searching for a band with an ampersand in its name and see what results you get. I'm not saying that users shouldn't be allowed to add whichever band they want, just that the music should be more easily searchable. Another example of how frustrating it is is that one can only search by three categories - band name, genre, country. It would be nice if myspace allowed users to search by song title, year, etc. If its collection were well organized and correctly cataloged, this could happen. The myspace music database is a wiki of sorts but with no oversight for errors. Maybe someday I'll get a life and not have to worry about it! Until then, though, they could hire me to clean it up and make it more usable. What a fun job that would be!